you are followers of david koresh. you are in there surrounded by tanks, for god sake. you expect at any minute you will be blown to smithereens. and you are pleased. that means david's prophecies were correct. we are going to be translated up to heaven and come back in the army of jesus. if the fbi knew that, do you think maybe they would have finally decided after seven weeks, ok, we will just go knock them down? they will not be able to stop us? everybody misunderstood everybody else. chaos then holy violence. peter: did you have good results talking to survivors, to dissidents of the branch davidians? jeff: there were not many left. a lot of them were not young. only nine adults escaped. the conflagration. i talked to five. and i had a phone conversation with another one living in england now. that so hated the questions i was asking that he decided i was sent by the devil. these people, the survivors, to this day, they believe david koresh really was the lamb and everything he said was true. that the things that happened at waco are really the beginning of the end t

david koresh. not very good childhoods. >> guest: no, but it is also true that children with much worse childhoods don't go out to proclaim themselves prophets and lead people to their death. manson didn't want my book to come out when he found out i traced his history to us because that would be able to write about his somewhat pampered childhood. jim jones had an odd childhood that he was always loved vernon wayne howell was born to a 14-year-old girl and was raised with a lot of uncles and stepdad, but he never wanted for food or attention. we can understand when people have problems how it might affect them. that doesn't mean we have too also believe that it was inevitable that became what they became. >> how many children of david koresh survived, and why so many? >> guest: sodavid koresh children, most of them, died in the final fire. that was deliberate on his part. all told, he fathered 23 children by just about a dozen women. he said that the bible quoted that the lamb shall spread his see

david koresh stole from team and lois roden was doing it.peter: the branch davidians were somewhat interactive with the town of waco. is that a fair statement? jeff: a lot of the branch davidians had the jobs in town. koresh had one legal wife who was a cashier. koresh himself liked to go to chelsea street pub at night and sing his song which no record producer in l.a. her wanted to acquire. when the media came in immediately following the events with the atf operations, they wanted stories. they would fan out into waco to ask people if they knew any of the branch davidians and if they had done disgusting things. all they were ever told is they are strange but keep to themselves. they could not find people who could complain about the davidians. these many years later, there are people who say i was there the whole time and always suspected they were terrible, but nobody was saying that at the time. peter: chuck, california. jeff: the writing you do -- type of writing you do, have you ever thought about the christian scientists and what they

. >> tell us jeff guinn what do "bonnie and clyde," wyatt earp jim jones david koresh charles manson have in common, people that you have written about. is there a script to that? >> oddly enough there is. my goal has always been to write books that captured the sweep of american history from the final settling of the west to the present day and each of these subjects are iconic. we remember them. people tend to remember them in different ways and a lot of the time they want this rather than fact. i've always thought the facts are far more interesting. when i take a subject as an example what i wanted to do was write about the late 1960s in america which in terms was a chaotic time makes today look peaceful when we are all living inso unison. to write aut that year someone or someone from that era that will make readers want to open up the book and read it. for better or worse charlie manson represents a lot about the late 1960s and the culture and people wanted to talk about the things people were with. i wrote a book about manson but it's about the late 1960s. everyone you named is

we're airing on television on a disney owned television network. [ applause ] and you're their david koreshthout ever having met you? >> yeah, yeah. it was a shock. and at the live finale, i actually met five of them. and i forgot everyone's name. >> jimmy: you did, yeah. i would do that too. >> just lost everything. it was terrifying. >> jimmy: do you remember the names of all 30 of the women who were on the show with you? >> you know, it was so scarring at the live finale that i didn't mess up a name again throughout the entire season. >> jimmy: so if i were to put up all 30 of the women and one of them -- [ applause ] i'm not going to ask you to name them because that's ridiculous. but if one of them wasn't the bachelorettes, would you be able to find that woman? >> absolutely. >> jimmy: okay. put it up on the wall. there they are. >> should i walk. >> jimmy: you can look at it closely and examine and figure out if somebody looks unfamiliar to you. [ laughter ] by the way, we're all hoping you get it wrong! [ laughter ] >> wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. [ laughter ] >> jimmy: i promise, w

tracking, appeared 2 goes back to the last segment where we talked about cults, i'll throw in david koreshragedy showed that overhead imagery, heat-seeking imagery the fbi was deploying overhead showed an audio that koresh gave the signal to start burning fires. that's what you can see on the imagery happening. why am i mentioning this? he wanted to burn the place down when he was cornered. the real concern needs to be the extent to which donald trump and perhaps those supporting him will want to burn the place down, institutions, the republican party's halfway burned down already, and what is this going to look like if they burn the place down and people preen to violence start doing what they think they're going called to do? >> i guess what worries me is rhetorically they're already there, right? they want to burn down all of the institutions that hold up the government. mike pence watts to get rid of d.o.e. desantis wants to get rid of the fbi. trump wants to turn them into his personal armies and police, intelligence services. i wonder if that's too much, or if the energy is focused e